Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/435

 BANISHMENT OF THUCYDIDES. 413 So they would have acted at any other time, and perhaps even then, if Perikles had been alive. But the news arrived just at the period when Athens was engaged in the expedition against Boeotia, which ended very shortly in the ruinous defeat of Delium. Under the discouragement arising from the death of the strategus, Hippokrates, and one thousand citizens, the idea of a fresh expedition to Thrace would probably have been intol- erable to Athenian hoplites : the hardships of a winter service in Thrace, as experienced a few years before in the blockade of Polidaea, would probably also aggravate their reluctance. In Grecian history, we must steadfastly keep in mind that we are reading about citizen soldiers, not about professional soldiers and that the temper of the time, whether of confidence or dis may, modifies to an unspeakable degree all the calculations of military and political prudence. Even after the rapid successes of Brasidas, not merely at Akanthus and Stageirus, but even al Amphipolis, they sent only a few inadequate guards ' to the points most threatened, thus leaving to their enterprising enemy the whole remaining winter for his operations, without hindrance. Without depreciating the merits of Brasidas, we may see that his extraordinary success was in great part owing to the no less extraordinary depression which at that time per- vaded the Athenian public : a feeling encouraged by Nikias ano other leading men of the same party, who were building upon if in order to get the Lacedaemonian proposals for peace accepted. But while we thus notice the short-comings of Athens, in noi sending timely forces against Brasidas, we must at the same time admit, that the most serious and irreparable loss which she sus- tained, that of Amphipolis, was the fault of her officers more than her own. Eukles, and the historian Thucydides, the two joint Athenian commanders in Thrace, to whom she had confided the defence of that important town, had means amply sufficient to place it beyond all risk of capture, if they had employed the most ordinary vigilance and precaution beforehand. That Thu- cydides became an exile immediately after this event, and 1 Thucyd. iv, 108. Ol p.ev '$r t valoi QvhaKuc wf tt; 67/iyov /cat iv it; rdf Tro/leif, etc.